The Connected Hospital

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High-Tech Devices Enhance Patient Care

By Tara Hulen

Some of the most important medical treatment advances in recent years have been quiet ones—high-tech devices that transmit crucial information from patient bedsides, recording a wealth of data to improve care. Nurses spend less time entering data and more time with patients. The potential for errors is lower. Care-team members can see new records right away instead of tracking down paper charts. And patients enjoy peace of mind knowing that everyone treating them is on the same page—or accessing the same computer file.

Electronic medical records (EMRs) are becoming commonplace in physicians’ offices and hospitals around the country, in part because new federal rules require their adoption. UAB adopted electronic records technology early, beginning in 2008; since then, the medical center has rolled out sophisticated systems that can quickly enter patients’ vital signs directly into their EMRs, monitor drug delivery, and instantly notify health-care teams of important changes in patients’ conditions, among other tasks.

“The goal is to create a complete and fully integrated EMR with immediate electronic synching of all patient data, available to everyone on the health-care teams at the same time,” says Joan Hicks, UAB Health System chief information officer. The benefits from systems already in place, Hicks says, are a return on investment that is “more than compelling.”

Take a closer look at a few of the new technologies connecting patients, caregivers, and treatments:

Sign Language

A system known as Bedside Medical Device Integration (BMDI) uses 400 physiologic monitors and 140 ventilators to read the vital signs of patients in UAB Hospital’s critical care and surgery recovery units. The data is immediately available in each patient’s EMR, where nurses verify the accuracy of the information. So far, BMDI has proven to save time and create a more complete EMR, basically eliminating data-recording errors.